Scammers

In the past couple days have the powertraders out there noticed an increased number of scammers. I have been trying to sell (2) armbraces a Mallyx and a Djinn. People have attempted scamming me 25 times in 3 hours.....I have never remembered this many scammers.

They seem to come out of the wood work when a truly high end item(s) is involved.
Just follow your instincts..

The community has got worse with age. Imagine what next year will be like..

High End items...hehehe nah

People think they can get away with it. Especially now that the game is getting cheaper and they can just launder items easily.

People that are too lazy to play and not smart enough to make anything but farm usually get frustrated and lose patience, and resort to this kind of silly behaviors.

I think that this kind of behavior should be punished in some way, like having a report option or enter in one of the current report categories, and be punished if it is repeated too much frequently.

just give them a jolly old e-slap

SO now your trying to blame the farmers for Scamming. HAHA you're almost to funny.

the fact is the fastes way to get money is to scamm people...
and after they scam you and you report them to support team with all evidences (screens etc.) they won't ban them...

I hope I wont get banned becouse I dont scam I just said what happened to me and I reported him with all evidences but support team is so ...

I think he was trying to say, "not smart enough to make anything farming" or atleast I hope he was trying to say.

I really feel that laziness is the correct answer.

Anyone else noticed that the number of attempted scams go up on the weekends? I refuse to run CoF on the weekend due to the number of scammers on runs.

it's always easier to sit in town whining than using brains and wikis

I've reported several people for scamming and everytime they dissappear for 2-3 weeks a couple of hours after I sent in a report. Just add them to friends list on storage account and watch them dissappear. One time it was even an attempted scam over 999 gold. I've also told people who have complained about being scammed how to report the person, and watch the person dissappear a little after the person says they're reporting the player. Its hardly a fast way to make money when most people that fall for it dont have very expensive items. The 2-3 weeks you're banned you miss out on making a lot of gold. Plus a possible permanent ban if you're caught enough.

i doubt its the fastest way to make money . ..
considering that most people with high end items will be paying attention and the people that fall for scams the most are new players who won't have that much.

powertrading still is the fastest way to make money.

Yes, lol. I'm the same way. I refuse to run it from Friday afternoon until Monday. Its AMAZING how the IQ of the customers drops so drastically. The number of scammers, leavers, compass-doodlers, and clueless people just skyrockets.

But yeah. That's the GW community for you.

Anyway, regarding the scammers in general...not much you can do...besides report them. Or make them look very stupid by outwitting them.

I've got scammed a couple of days ago, unded mini bone dragon :/
Was my own stupid mistake ofc. got owned by the easier scamming way:
"Drop your item"
"ok"

Anyway , I've been talking to the scam guy and he said he makes about 500k in 3 hours ;_;

They do it because they get away with it. It's like RA sync, nobody at the ANet team cares enough to deal with the issue.

I agree with that, I mean those scammers , I guess they scam a lot, so I can also imagine that they get reported a lot.
But they are still in-game scamming people after many reports ?

Hehe, thats something I won't be doing if I were you. Will probably go into my ignore list straight away.

I'd say 'welcome to guild wars', but that would be kinda harsh.

the problem is as soon as they realise I cought them on scamming, they rezone pretty fast so /report option won't work. I still got a few screenshots of attempted scamms... should I just send them to anet or lay back and give it a break?

Fair comment if you ask me.

While it's only a small proportion that are like this, that proportion is growing by the day.

its getting worse and worse :S

why not make an announcement in log-in screen about it.. least they can do!

Would it be hard to add a 'Scamming' option in the /report window? I can't see how it would be abused in any way although it could be difficult if people's definitions of 'scam' vary.

I don't know if the server logs what happens in the trade window or if it simply stores the final trade. If it logs everything then people could /report those who try to buy ectos for 5 gold, for example.

No, that scam has never successfully worked on me and it doesn't matter if you think the people who fall for it deserve to be scammed.

I think the reason so many people continually scam is because I doubt if many people bother to send an e-mail to support explaining what happened with an attached screenshot. Some people want to spend their time enjoying the game, not spamming the support inbox.

One of my friends go scammed last night, out of a ferry to Consulate Docks - 400g only, but it was a scam. The scammer bragged about it to them befoe PMing them with a "welcome to Guild Wars, where you get scammed!" before putting them to his ignore list and exiting GW.

They were 2 guys. The guy was proud to have scammed 2 people outta 800g. Kinda sad.

In all my GW life I got scammed twice. A 3-man DoA run where the smiter got two gems in a row then pretexted to have to go, even though we had all agreed to split gems. I put him in f-list, he had switched to away. Mapped back in DoA, switched districts. He was trying to sell both gems. And he was pretty proud of it too. The other was a Letter to Jatoro's Mother/Letter To Mom scam (if I'd have been smarter I'd have checked before though). I don't even remember the guy's name. Both happened over 6 months back... never had anyone try to scam me since then.

This happens on such runs. Thats why most longer runs you pay before you arrive (see Droks etc)

Reporting for scamming wouldn't work. Anet does not ban for scamming, as i most cases it's the persons own fault (being an idiot etc)

peoples perception of scamming would make a report feature usless.

although I would like to see a way of scammers getting repremanded.

That's really easy to get away with. I can't (be bothered to) find the exact quote from Gaile but the gist of it was that so-called "gentlemen's agreements" and related disputes are the players' problem.

When farming Foundry with 3 people was big, I occasionally went with a pug and I met some great people, who I still chat to, and some greedy idiots. The idiots are happy to take a share of others gems and go silent or deny that it's their turn to share. Even though this only happened two or three times, my faith in humaity diminished to the point that I started doing 'finders keepers' instead. Sometimes it was demoralising when I tanked half of the monsters in one go and the "pro smiter" and the spirit spammer got all of the loot. At least I knew where I stood and didn't have to worry about confrontation later.

I don't see why God 'hexed' me with feelings of [skill]guilt[/skill] and [skill]empathy[/skill] and other people don't care at all.

50/50 split in pugs?! hehe

Never done 50/50

What drops for you is yours. What drops for me is mine.

50/50 only works if you trust the other person

and in gw, thats not many people

I play with RL friends only. Problem averted.

I don't really think there's high end stuff anymore if this goes on.

Things that don't drop anymore are always high-end Anyway, I personally haven't really noticed any more scammers than usual. Only one in the past week. He had a Shiro'ken and a Zhed...and tried to steal my Magmas Shield o_O

~Tru

Not paying 400g for a lift to the docks is not a scam, it's simply "not paying."

Telling someone to put an item on the ground so they can see it, and then shadow stepping to them and grabbing it, that's scammish.

Not paying for a service is not a scam, there's no fraudulent scheme there.

Kinda like this? ::


He says trade doesn't work (cancel , cancel ,cancel)
-Takes me outside shows his Fake Build and asks me to do the same.
- Drops his 95k , take it back
- I drop Bone Dragon
- He uses Ebon Escape

That's what happened to me a few days ago, anyway as you can see it's almost 100% my own fault.

Try not paying a lawyer.

You pay for service rendered all the time and not paying for a run is scamming. Had someone run ATFH yesterday for me, working on books to get armor, two of us being ran and I paid, the other guy didn't and guess what if this happens enough people stop running, which hurts people like me since it becomes harder to find a runner.

CoF is a great example. Place was full of runners at one time but now you go there and all you see is "LFR" and the main reason I stop running was dealing with idiots on runs.

Uh... going into a deal with the intent not to pay after the agreed upon services are fully rendered by the other party, that's a scheme. It's a very simplistic scheme, but still a scheme.

Simple theft through not paying for a run is not scamming. There is no scheme involved. I'm not debating whether or not it is against the rules. Yes, it's unethical and in the real world not paying for a service would likely get you into hot water, but their's no deceit involved. The rich Nigerian that needs your bank account number to help him transfer money out of the country for which you'll receive hundreds of k's of dollars is a scam. Dashing and dining, on the other hand, is theft, not scamming.

Jimme got scammed, through sheer stupidity on his part, but still he got scammed. There was a fraudulent scheme involved..."my trade doesn't work."

Arguably, not paying for a run could be called 'scamming' because of the word's evolution in meaning.

People are left likely to scoff at 'A person scammed me in game' then 'A person stole from me in game'. It's strange, but that's English.

And the thing is...if you WERE to report that to Anet, what would they say? Probably something along the lines of..."it was your own silly fault, and that you entered the trade of your own free will, and were not forced or hacked into doing anything that didn't require you yourself to act."

It's unfortunate that people scam that way...but you were not forced into entering any kind of trade with that person. It was your choice, and ultimately you are responsible for your own losses and gains.

And on the running thing, cos apparently I'm on a roll...lol...

If you run people...how are they meant to police the none payers? Shall we have an Anet police force just to protect runners? Are they meant to move recources from elswhere to ensure you get your 400g, 1k, etc? That would be a complete waste of time and manpower.

You run people of your own free will. You expect those people to abide by YOUR rules (not Anet's rules, as running is not actually an official part of the game), and when they don't it's up to YOU to either swallow it or try to get the none payer to pay. There's nothing Anet can do, and nothing they should have to do in that kind of situation. You run a service that isn't officially supported, you should expect good and bad customers and deal with it yourself.

It's like somebody trading on the black market and expecting protection from the law, when they're not actually trading under the rules of the law of which they want to protect them.

In real life often people DO refuse to pay for services, and we have laws for that. Guild Wars isn't real life, however...and though there are rules of conduct, they cannot police every single trade action, running scam, or dispute. Why should they? It's up to each player to recognize dodgy situations and possible threats to their 'income'. It's your running 'business' so it's your problem, Anet do not have a hand in your 'business'. As long as nobody is being griefed, or harassed or abused (in accordance with Anet's rules and regs) then you have to accept that you'll take losses as well as gains.

Otherwise we'll be left with people reporting runners for charging too much, for traders asking too much for things you think should be priced less, or that are in general priced less. If a scamming option is added to the report feature then it's open to a vast amount of abuse, and most of those scams would have been avoided if people would just use some common sense.

Anet can't give you common sense, so it's time to stand on your own two feet and stop expecting them to 'protect you' from yourself.

That's not a scammer anymore, that's a greifer. Those people are the worst since they're willing to sacrifice their own time and money just to piss you off.

Definition of scamming? I remember power traders are labelled as scammers back then in propechies. If you have the /report scammers function back then, many people probably won't be around now. (or at least won't be around after prophecies)